


hearts of kyber

by gingergenower



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Everybody Lives, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Minor Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, except K2 sorry, spoilery-warnings and tags inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 22:57:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9927824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingergenower/pseuds/gingergenower
Summary: They're grains of sand in the tide; the Force moves them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler-y tags and warnings in the notes at the bottom.

Cassian finds his crew in the hangar.

Baze disassembles his blaster, replacing the power cells; Bodhi’s leg dangling off the side of their ship, halfway through putting the retrofitted ion engines in place; Chirrut’s stood five feet in front of Jyn and he bows. She’s blindfolded with her own scarf, adjusting her grip on his staff. She licks her lips.

Crossing his arms, Cassian leans against a nearby set of boxes.

Unseeing eyes a little left of Jyn, Chirrut hasn’t a weapon, but Baze isn’t even watching. They all know she won’t land a hit. Her breathing hitches, and Chirrut shifts to looking directly at her. Jyn’s not even close to looking at him.

As though to circle her, Chirrut steps sideways, and she pulls the staff closer to her side as if to thrust it forward.

Chirrut takes two more steps, but Jyn doesn’t move. Cassian doesn’t see what snaps but Jyn whips the staff out and would’ve slammed it into Chirrut’s head if he didn’t catch it, yanking Jyn off balance and kicking her legs from under her. Smacking into the ground face first, Jyn groans and Cassian winces. Bodhi looks pained, but she huffs and roll onto her back.

“Good,” Chirrut says brightly, offering her his hand as she yanks the scarf down.

She take sit, and back on her feet she dusts herself off. “If you say so,” she says, grimacing.

“Breathe. Let it in. Again.”

Taking the staff back, she tugs the blindfold down. Cassian lets them spar for several more minutes.

Zama-shiwo seems to fascinate Jyn, and Chirrut’s been teaching her for almost three weeks. She already moves a little more like him. There’s precision and grace in her technique, refinement in her blows and parrying. It’s as though her body is more of an instrument she’s tuning, placement calculated in her spatial awareness. Beads of sweat roll down her temples even though she’s stripped to just a tank top on her top half, straining to focus. 

No one reacts when Chirrut twists the staff out of her hands- but she dodges the blow he throws at her stomach.

Bodhi whoops, punching the air and nearly overbalancing, and Cassian grins. Chirrut nods when she rips of the blindfold, and even Baze smiles, snapping the cells into his blaster.

“Excellent.”

Staring at Chirrut, she doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself. “It feels like energy.”

“Yes.”

Chirrut turns to Cassian. “Sorry for keeping you waiting.”

She hasn’t even noticed he was there- Jyn catches sight of him and outright beams. He straightens up, walking into the space where they were sparring, and her expression changes. She rests her hand where her blaster’s usually holstered. “Where’re we going?”

Cassian shakes his head. “Rook, half an hour?”

Saluting, Bodhi turns back to the ship and fixes it with new vigour.

Head cocked to the side, Chirrut leans into his staff, sightline still with Cassian as his primary focus. “Yes?”

“It’s a skeleton crew,” Cassian says, looking between Chirrut and Baze.

Frowning, Jyn scoops up her jacket. “We are a skeleton crew.”

“No, I just need a pilot.”

Bodhi glances up.”

“I find it hard to believe you don’t even need another gun.”

“It’s not that kind of mission, lieutenant.”

There’s a kind of finality in his tone, and she nods, swallowing. Her authority was never retracted and he knows she sees it as a kind of belonging. Orders aren’t something she takes too seriously, but her command of others’ lives are.

Baze looks irritated, flicking to cover shut on his blaster.

“Besides, we’re going to be back this evening,” Cassian shrugs, “and I’m sure they’ll need us all for something.”

Pulling on her jacket, Jyn’s lips are pressed together, and she looks up. “Bodhi?”

“Yeah, get up here.”

The ladder’s rickety but she clambers up it, swinging across and landing on the platform he’s stood on. She holds screws and plating and screwdrivers for him, and she doesn’t watch to see where Cassian goes. Below them, Baze grunts something at Chirrut, who responds lightly. 

Bodhi taps the engine with the back of a screwdriver, trying to adjust its positioning. It’s lodged in wrong. “If it makes you feel any better, he probably feels as bad about leaving you as you feel about it.”

She scratches the back of her neck, sighing.

“I think he’s worried he’ll come back and you’ll have been ordered off on some suicide mission and he won’t be allowed to follow you.”

Huffing, she half smiles. “That’s pretty specific.”

“Yeah, well. He talks a lot.”

“That’s not something anyone could accuse him of.”

“He talks about you a lot.”

At that, Jyn shakes her head, and Bodhi chuckles, rapping the engine progressing to smacking it.

Fifteen minutes later, Bodhi’s inside the ship starting up the engines and she’s in Cassian’s arms. Softly, he presses a kiss to her forehead, and pulls back. She rests a hand against his chest, closing her eyes.

She’s attuned to his heartbeat. She wakes up with her head resting on his chest and his arms wrapped around her, and it thumps steadily under her fingers now. The kyber crystal rests over her sternum, and she’s sure it throbs in time with the heart under her hand, alight with warmth. 

He folds both hands over hers, pulls it up to kiss it, and disappears into the ship.

The rest of the crew stand well back as the ship takes off, Baze and Chirrut either side of Jyn.

“Shall we continue?”

With nothing better to do, Jyn nods, taking his staff.

On her third break, taking off her jacket and chugging from her canteen, Jyn listens to Chirrut’s explain that he doesn’t tire out like she does because he has such control of his body he can temper his heart rate.

She frowns at him, and he smiles.

“I wouldn’t lie.”

“Bullshit,” mutters Baze.

“I wouldn’t lie about the Force.”

“Superstitious Jedi bullshit,” Baze tells her. 

She grins, turning to him. “I bet you used to believe all of this. One with the Force, the Force is with me. All of it.”

“If I did, I don’t remember.”

Jokingly, Jyn presses a finger to her temple and points it as Baze. “I detect falsehoods.”

“That wasn’t even good superstitious bullshit. You’re getting as bad as him.”

“Not quite yet,” Chirrut says.

Securing her scarf in place, she picks the staff up and plants her feet firmly to the ground. Following the sound of his footsteps, her breathing’s slow, and that thrum of energy in brighter in Chirrut than anyone she’s ever met but they’re grains of sand in the tide. The Force moves them.

She’s just reaching out to Baze, skimming around the edges of him. He’s brighter than he’d probably like, but just as she’s grasping him her skull rattles. Retracting inwards, her head aches, and she yanks the scarf off.

Chirrut exchanges a look with Baze. They both felt it too.

Catching the staff Jyn tosses to him, Chirrut lets Jyn walk away. She pulls rank and marches into the control room, managing to get through to Draven, but he doesn’t even look up when she stops at his side. He’s leaning over another operative, who sends a message in code.

“This better be good, Erso.”

“Something’s wrong, general.”

“Can you clarify?”

The edges of her crystal bites into her fingers. “A mission went wrong, or…” She frowns, concentrating.

“Or?”

“…the Empire. They’re making a move somewhere, I can feel it.”

“You have ‘a feeling’?”

“Chirrut Îmwe felt it too.”

Draven straightens up, looking at her. He doesn’t take too much stock in Chirrut, but he does respect the man’s apparent connection to the Force. “Can you give me any more details?”

“I’m not a Jedi.”

“So you’re telling me that something’s wrong, somewhere in the galaxy, and the Empire’s behind it.”

She shakes her head slightly, closing her eyes. “Yes.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, he considers her. “Get your men together, get a ship together. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

There’s a ship they scrounge- a battered U-Wing transport that comes with a pilot. Baze raises an eyebrows at the kind, barely older Jyn, but Chirrut says nothing. He hums tunelessly while Jyn tries to familiarise herself with the controls, the pilot introducing herself as Serra and taking her through the basics. There’s only an hour before Cassian’s due back, they might even be back in time to take them to interfere with whatever the Empire’s up to, but she can’t count on it.

Baze sits as still as Chirrut, but she knows when he stirs he’ll move with a fierce anger Chirrut never possesses. On the battlefield, Baze and Jyn are much the same. She and Chirrut are opposites, and they haven’t been afforded the experience he and Baze have together to work as well as they do.

As Jyn’s starting to feel comfortable in the ship, she hears Chirrut and Baze move. Scrambling out of the cockpit, she sees Draven striding towards the ship. The line of his mouth is downturned, the wrinkles in his forehead trenches. He addresses Jyn directly.

“We just received a transmission from an incoming ship. Our base of operations in Utapau was discovered by Empire military and attacked half an hour ago.”

“We can-”

“Erso.”

“…sorry, general.”

He takes a deep breath. “The incoming ship has Bodhi Rook on board.”

Her spine tightens. Draven’s eyes don’t leave hers.

“Captain Andor is dead.”

Hand closing around her crystal, she squeezes her eyes shut and focusses, reaching out with her mind. The vast cold of space is so great she’s not sure she’s not sure she could feel him anyway, but she keeps going, sifting through the dark until she’s lost. Her crystal’s sharp and cold.

She shudders in one shaking, ragged breath, and holds it. She can’t think, shouldn’t think, don’t think about it don’t give in to it hold on, _breathe_. Dropping the crystal, she looks to Draven.

“Will you be capable of leading this mission?”

They are grains of sand. The Force moves them. “Yes.”

Baze’s hand rests on her shoulder. Draven offers her a rank badge, two pips instead of the one she has, and she pins it to her chest with trembling hands. It’s the same as Cassian’s.

“In that case, you’ll take Andor’s position as captain. You need to choose a lieutenant.”

“Baze.”

Draven nods. “When the incoming ship arrives, return to Utapau on it. Rook should have some useful information to help you plan your tactics. Your mission is to go to the base and if it’s safe to do so, enter it and find any surviving operatives. Bring them back, and destroy the base on your way out.”

“And if I find any living Empire officials?”

“If they’re a ranking officer, if they’re not too much trouble, bring them, but this is first a rescue mission.”

“Understood.”

They’re directed to the fifth landing pad, and Bodhi touches the ship down with a gentle clang. Mechanics pump fuel into its tank before he turns the engine off, and he emerges stricken and red-eyed.

They don’t ask for the story but they get it. Cassian assassinated someone on that planet without a hitch. Stopping in Utapau for less than an hour, Cassian intended to go to their control room to check their route back to Yavin 4, but he never got there- the Empire hit the base full force. Over their handheld comms, Cassian ordered Bodhi to leave. He told him not to come back, or get help. He told him to go.

“I didn’t- I didn’t know what I could do, there was nothing I could do-”

Jyn grabs his shoulders, making him look at her. “Can you fly?”

He nods, steeling himself under her set jaw and tearless face. In the cockpit together, Jyn’s sat where Cassian must have been only hours before.

They’re cleared for take-off, and Bodhi starts engaging the sequence of buttons and levers, dials twisting precisely under his hands. Right before he engages the throttle, he looks at Jyn.

“He said he loves you. He loves you and he’s sorry.”

She will not lead her team to death because of any suicidal recklessness she may feel inclined to. This isn’t about the rebellion, or Cassian, or what he might have wanted. It’s about the lives they might yet save.

Catching the only tear that falls with her sleeve, she takes hold of the controls and tells him she’s ready.

***

She lapses into grief once. She allows herself it. They’ve cleared the base, no living Empire operative left- they were searching for intelligence, so they didn’t do too much internal damage- and they’ve found nearly thirty rebels alive.

Stumbling on a splayed out arm, she finds a barely-alive Empire officer. He stirs, groaning, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth. He’ll be dead in a few minutes anyway. 

Blaster of her holster, she shoots until there’s a gaping hole ripped through his chest, Empire insignia melted.

Chirrut comes over the comms, telling her to breathe, and she does.

She does.

On returning to the ship and accounting for everyone, Baze half-carries a woman with Admiral pips on her chest to safety. Jyn does the last sweep of the base. It’s only small, in the Outer Rim and more exposed for it, so she walks all the way around it. Parts of the ceiling are collapsed in from external TIE fighter attacks, some bodies destroyed beyond recognition, and no one’s found Cassian’s. She thinks it might be buried. Then, she thinks she sees him.

The corpse is mangled and bloody, and she can’t quite remember what Cassian was wearing when he left, but the fingers on the body aren’t nearly slender enough. Cassian clasps her hand and his fingers are so much longer than hers. She’s honestly grateful they don’t find him, or don’t know him if they don’t see him.

She wants to remember warm hands and his beating heart under her ear.

They destroy the base behind them, nothing for later Empire raiding parties to find, and Bodhi takes a few detours on the way back. It’s the same route he came back on the first time, apparently, but he moves as quickly as he can. Some of the people on board have already been bleeding for a long time. On landing, Jyn organises the evacuation of the ship, giving the medics the most critical cases first. Slowly, the ship empties. The ones that found places to hide and remained unhurt leave last.

They watch the last medic walk the Admiral away- she’s getting stronger every minute, and Chirrut opens his arms. Jyn leans into him, and Bodhi and Baze both hug her too, and there’s grief in their eyes but not hers. She might still be numb, or tired. Something will set her off. Getting in bed alone. His clothes. Whatever weapons he left behind. The letter he wrote to her. The letter she wrote to him, that’ll never be opened.

A bark jerks her out of her reverie- Draven orders her entire team to follow him.

Bodhi holds her hand as they walk. She doesn’t think much of it, doesn’t think much of anything, not even where they’re going until they’re in the medical bay. They’re surrounded by the people they just saved, but Draven’s still walking and he points into a private room.

“I’ll have your badge back at some point,” Draven tells Jyn, and she frowns, walking into the room.

Bruised, bloody, bags under his wide open eyes, Cassian’s in the hospital bed.

Jyn’s knees slam into the ground, Bodhi yells, but she doesn’t hear Draven’s explanation heaving herself back to her feet, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care she doesn’t care she doesn’t care-

Throwing herself to his side, she scrabbles to find his hand. Long, thin fingers lock with hers and she presses the hand to her lips, pulse in his wrist, but she can’t see him through the tears.

Eventually, she realises he’s talking, but he’s just soothing her, murmuring nonsense words of comfort, repeating he’s alive over and over again. It takes her a while to believe it.

Cassian strokes her hand with his thumb.

“Shh, shh, I’m here.”

She nods, and a fresh wave of tears overwhelm her.

“We’re both alright, we’re both fine.”

In the end, she closes her eyes and centres herself, breathing slow.

“That’s it… that’s it.”

The room’s empty. They’re alone. “How?”

“Some general grabbed me and dragged me out. We were right next to the control room, but there was some back door he knew about- I got lucky. He piled as many people as he could on the ship and got us the hell out of there. Took some navigating, apparently.” Reaching up, he pulls her necklace free of her shirt, lying it down gently. “Could you not find me?”

She shakes her head. “It’s superstitious Jedi bullshit.”

“Maybe you need a little more practice.”

“Chirrut thought you were dead too.”

“He’s not quite as connected to me as you are. I bet he can feel Baze anywhere in the universe.”

Jyn shakes her head, but she doesn’t know. He shuffles across the bed- a couple of cracked ribs, apparently, nothing major- and lets her climb in.

The next time someone comes in, they’re both asleep. She’s wrapped up in his arms, head resting where his heart beats.

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilery warnings: angst with a happy ending, basically. They all think Cassian's dead and he's not, as it turns out.
> 
> Song that got me through writing this story: Jeremy's Jordan 'Good Enough'.


End file.
